The momentum didn't stop in Seattle—Portland threw its own Sophie Night days later. Then, this past Sunday, August 2, Jennifer Sey took it to Minneapolis.
This is what happened.
Pre-Game
At a pregame rally, Minnesota Senate candidate and former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, women’s rights activist Amy Sousa, star softball player Kendall Kotzmacher, and many other women and girls gathered outside the Target Center to take pictures with the life-size Sophie Cunningham sign and celebrate and thank her—and all the women who have been fighting for fairness and reality for years.
"We were joyous. We gave out T-shirts. We had signs thanking Sophie. We gave out gummy bracelets. We took photos and smiled.
We were met with more hostility than you can fathom. There were very few of them—the trans activists. There were only about four or five. But they had megaphones and just shouted us down. They said nothing of substance. They just shouted so we couldn’t be heard.
That tells you where this actually sits in culture: we're the mainstream now. And the other side is panicking. It's the last gasp of a dying movement that never should have been."
—Jennifer Sey
Why Sophie Is the Sign
Sophie is the active professional athlete this movement needed to break into the mainstream. She's holding her ground—no bent knee, no walking it back—and she's doing it with grace instead of anger.
It's hard to imagine a better athlete to lead the charge.
At the Game
What happened in the arena is not reflected in the media coverage. Broadcasters leaned hard into the Lynx coach's "Trans Kids Belong" tee and cut to the handful of fans wearing the same message, building a consensus that didn't exist.
In the actual crowd, XX-XY Athletics tees and "We Love Sophie" signs were everywhere. Riley and Jennifer couldn't walk ten feet without someone stopping them for a photo or a thank-you.
The media elite are working hard to control the narrative and bury the real story: people aren't afraid anymore to say that men cannot become women and that women deserve their own sports and spaces.
That's the normal, moral position now.
The Culture Has Moved. The Institutions Haven't.
Twenty-seven states already protect girls' sports, and the legislation keeps moving. But schools, media, and corporations—including these teams—are still running 2020's playbook, betting that the same bullying tactics that worked for a decade will work again.
They won't. The truth comes out in the end, and people are done pretending otherwise.
The League's Own Worst Enemy
The WNBA is sitting on a superstar in Caitlin Clark that it won't fully lead with, and it keeps chastising the one player—Cunningham—willing to say what most fans already believe.
That's not a culture problem—it's a business problem. A league that wants to grow doesn't sideline its two biggest draws. The WNBA has lost the plot, and it keeps getting in its own way.
Sophie said what she said, and we're with her.
More athletes are coming—it happens slowly, then all at once. XX-XY Athletics set out to change the cultural conversation, to make it cool again to stand up for women and girls.
That's happening now. We have lift-off. We're the cool ones. We're the sensible ones. And we're not backing down.
